The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved patent number 7,027,987 today to Alexander Franz of Google. The abstract… “A system provides search results from a voice search query. The system receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associated with a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses. The system then provides the weighted boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user.”

This is an example of how Google will stay ahead of the competition. Google’s stock price still soars above $400, and with creativity like this it will continue.

Imagine a customer service manager wants to search through thousands of recorded telephone calls to see how many times the representative says “NO”. The manager could determine the reps that say it too much and those that don’t say it often enough. The uses of a voice search function would be endless.